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Ill's household who was executed after having supported Richard at Bosworth. The Howard family had later used their influence to prevent his family from losing everything, and more than a century later Sir George was still grateful to them. He had risen to prominence at the court of Elizabeth I, and became Master of the Revels to James I, licensing several of Shakespeare's plays in this capacity. Tragically he went insane in 1621 and died the next year.
    Buck's The History of King Richard III was written in 1619. It was a vast work, carefully researched from early manuscripts preserved in the Tower of London, Sir Robert Cotton's library -- which contained an original copy of the Croyland Chronicle -- the College of Arms, and the private collection of Thomas Howard, Earl of Arundel, to whom the work was dedicated. It is also possible that Buck used family information handed down from Richard Ill's time.
    Buck's aim in writing his book was to proclaim Richard Ill's innocence of the crimes laid at his door by earlier writers. He was not entirely impartial -- his family had supported Richard and he felt this needed justification. He claimed that More's biography was too full of errors to be reliable. Many people found Buck's portrayal attractive and credible, and it was at this point that the controversy over Richard III that persists to this day began in earnest.
    Buck's holograph MS. (Cotton MS. Tiberius E.xf.238) -- 'corrected and amended on every page' -- was damaged in the Cottonian fire; only fragments remain in the British Library. Another version of the first two books of the manuscript is British Library Egerton MS. 2216-- 2220, but this is a copy. Buck's nephew, another George Buck, printed an abridged and censored version of the work in 1646, the only version available until 1979, when A.N. Kincaid published his splendid edition of the original text, which revealed several convincing details and exposed the deficiencies in the 1646 edition.
    The last of the 'original' narrative sources was The History of Henry VII by Sir Francis Bacon (1561-1626), published in 1622. This excellent, erudite work by a lawyer, statesman and Lord Chancellor, was for centuries the standard biography of Henry; well-researched, objective, and advanced for its time. Even today it stands up well in the face of modern research. Placed as he was, Bacon had access to official records, some no longer extant, and his work has value for this alone.
    The sources discussed above are so integral to the subject of the Princes that, as will be seen in the following chapters, they are indeed part of the plot. All these writers have, in their various ways, influenced the controversy about the Princes, and so we need to know about them, and their loyalties and prejudices, before we can consider what weight to give to their evidence. This is a crucial factor, because in that evidence lie the vital clues to the fate of the Princes.

2. The Sanctuary Child
    In the fifteenth century the succession to the English crown was never stable. The Plantagenets had ruled England since 1154, and until 1399 the succession had generally passed fairly peacefully from father to son. But Edward III, who died in 1377, had several sons whom he endowed with dukedoms, thus calling into being a race of magnates or aristocrats related by blood to the King, some of whom ultimately became intent on claiming the throne. The first was Henry of Bolingbroke, son of John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, fourth surviving son of Edward III. In 1399, Bolingbroke deposed, and later murdered, his childless cousin Richard II and usurped the throne himself as Henry IV, thus founding the royal House of Lancaster and overlooking the claim of Richard's designated heir, his third cousin Edmund Mortimer, then a child of seven, who was descended from Lionel of Antwerp, Duke of Clarence, second surviving son of Edward III.
    Henry IV's title to the throne was therefore dubious, but what he had taken he held